


Its Own Reward

by inlovewithnight



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-13
Updated: 2007-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set during "Retribution."</p>
    </blockquote>





	Its Own Reward

**Author's Note:**

> Set during "Retribution."

Horatio vanished into the fort, every step precise and clipped and furious if one knew how to look, which Archie suspected that no one but he himself cared to do. It wasn't done to stare at the walking dead. Excessively morbid. A bit ghoulish. There was probably some prohibition against it tucked away in the Articles of War, for which the punishment, ironically enough, would be death, from which the rest of the crew would avert their eyes, and so forth and so on until they'd sailed to the end of the world, every man jack of them blind.

He clenched his fists, digging his fingers into his palm to check himself. It was not yet time to lose his head. He had a grim suspicion that it never would be again, which was unfortunate for him, given that he had never quite seemed to master the trick of keeping it. He was almost certain to do something foolish, reckless, or deliberately baiting soon, for no other reason than that he was overdue to do so, even if he hadn't been blind bloody furious with His Majesty's Navy and all of its works at the moment.

“Mr. Kennedy,” Bush said softly, angling his body between Buckland and Archie as if making himself a barrier, “why don't you come with me to disperse the men?”

“I'm sure it's a duty you can handle yourself, Mr. Bush,” he replied, sheer contrariness seizing his tongue with something like relief.

“Perhaps you could assist me,” Bush said, an edge creeping into his voice, and Archie spared a heartbeat to kick himself in the figurative backside. Of course. The man was offering an out, for reasons that could be considered later. He should take it.

“Of course. That is a very wise suggestion, Mr. Bush.” He touched his hat to Bush and turned to follow Bush back away from the water, deliberately pretending that Buckland had neither sight nor hearing to demand acknowledgment, and knowing the man would gladly join in the pretense.

Archie could not resist a parting shot, though, curse and bless his native rebellion. “We must give him as much time to prepare as possible, after all. The fort can hardly be expected to blow itself up, convenient as that would be.”

He suspected that even if God were willing to hand out such a convenience, Buckland would reject it, or find some other deadly plan to place on Hornblower's shoulders. Buckland had drawn the mark of the damned on Horatio's back and taken aim and there the metaphor fell to shreds in Archie's mind, because the idea of Buckland having the stones to actually shoot anyone was flatly ludicrous, even to those who had gone through battles and boardings at his side.

“Perhaps his survival is a sign of extraordinary luck,” he muttered to himself as he followed Bush. The men stood about in vague lines and clusters, whispers moving through the ranks, and while the proper thing for an officer to do would be to order them to disperse and make themselves useful, Archie found himself indifferent. Bush said nothing either, squinting against the bright light off the sand and rock, looking up at that damned fort that had brought nothing but problems. Damn the Spanish for ever building the thing.

Archie stopped, unwilling to go any further, and waited until Bush also checked his stride and looked back in puzzlement. “Mr. Kennedy?”

“Why are we doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“This.” Bush frowned slightly, eyes flashing with incipient exasperation, and Archie clarified. “Following his orders.”

  
Bush's eyebrow rose. “Because as I recall, Mr. Kennedy, our job is to follow our captain's orders.”

“We've removed one captain already,” Archie said, not bothering to look over his shoulder or moderate his tone. “It couldn't be so very hard to do it again.”

Bush gave him a startled look that faded into reproof, and Archie bit his tongue to keep from shouting. Horatio's death would be Buckland's prize far more than the Spanish ships, for all that they alone would be entered in the ledger in Kingston. And Horatio was giving the prize over without even making the man fight for it, in the name of duty. Perhaps this was how men like Buckland were made, a long line of gifts sheltered under duty so that they never had to fight.

“We don't have to do this,” he said again, not permitting his eyes to leave Bush's, to look at the fort.

Bush's eyes were unreadable. “Once again, I must remind you that we have our orders.”

“No.” Archie shook his head. “Think about it more closely, Mr. Bush. Mr. Hornblower has his orders. _We_ have been given nothing of the kind. Only...suggestions. There is room for interpretation, if you care to look.”

Bush's mouth curved in a vague approximation of a smile. “You sound very much like Mr. Hornblower at times, you know.”

Kennedy returned a similar smile, though he was no longer truly seeing the other man as they resumed walking. His mind was stirring at a frantic pace, ideas raising half-formed and falling away again. There was the glimmer of something solid, though, just out of reach, and he'd have it within minutes. The skeleton of a plan.

He looked at Bush again as they stopped, not far from the entrance to the tunnels where Horatio had vanished again to his duty, to his death. Bush was the nephew of a blacksmith, and a practical man. He ought to be useful in fleshing out that skeleton. And Archie had a hunch that Bush would prefer aiding Horatio, edge of mutinous or not, over strict obedience to Buckland's orders, as would any man with a spine and a brain.

Archie didn't bother to try to clarify in his mind which drove him more, saving Horatio for Horatio's sake or snatching the prize from Buckland. Motive was essentially nil when weighed against ends, and the ends here were one, the same, and satisfying. Defiance, as Archie had found so often in his tempestuous life, was its own reward.  



End file.
